Social Practice Institute Shavuot Artist Talks

May 25th, 7pm EST via ZOOM
REGISTER HERE

Come learn about the Social Practice Institute from the Greensboro Contemporary Jewish Museum leadership, meet the resident artists, and learn more about the Jewish-themed socially engaged projects they created across the Southern region.

In association with the Jewish American Heritage Month 2023 & the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History.

ABOUT THE SOCIAL PRACTICE INSTITUTE (SPI) + RESIDENCY

The GCJM Social Practice Institute and artist residency trains Jewish identifying southern-based artists in the pedagogy of socially engaged art practice alongside a curriculum of Jewish thought leadership. Each year, we award up to six Jewish artists living in the U.S. South (Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, District of Columbia) a safe and generative space to converse about and explore contemporary Jewish experience while expanding their art practice. The SPI participating artists will gather in residence for two weeks at Elsewhere Museum in Greensboro, NC to interpret, disrupt, narrate and reimagine contemporary Jewish life and experience through the development and implementation of relevant and timely socially engaged artworks. The subsidized training provided by the Institute will support each artist in designing and carrying out a social practice artwork that intersects with and engages the Jewish community in Greensboro, NC and their hometowns.

MEET OUR 2022 COHORT

Zoe Wampler

https://www.zoewampler.com

Zoe Wampler (they/she) is a movement artist and educator based in Washington, DC. Their work integrates choreography, performance, and teaching practice as a means to queer, question, and reimagine bodily relationships. Her creations combine embodied knowledge from a BFA in Dance & Choreography with lived experience as a Queer, Jewish person: all in an effort to tune into their ancestral and communal histories and better navigate this mercurial world. Current veins of research in Zoe's work explore the body’s connection to land and ecological stewardship, traditional Jewish rest cycles, and the spectrum of responsibility between individual and community.

Mike Wirth

www.mikewirthart.com

Mike Wirth (he/him/his/they/theirs) is a visual artist, digital experience designer, and muralist, best known for his thoughtful murals, public art installations, and client-driven commercial design work that focus on major social justice issues and his identity as a Southern, Jewish-American. Over the past 20 years, Wirth’s murals, published works, and digital museum exhibits have appeared in New York, Miami, Charlotte, NC, and internationally in Croatia, Poland, and Germany.

Ryna Frankel

www.rynafrankel.com

Ryna Frankel (She/her/hers) makes sculptures, paintings, and installation that usually involve the color pink. She likes to think that color is useful in creating tone in artwork, and pink has fun, girly, happy, cute, and oppressive references. Ryna completed a BA in Visual Studies at The University of Pennsylvania and a post-baccalaureate certificate in Painting at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She received her MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Washington in 2017.

Logan gabrielle Schulman

https://loganschulman.net/

Logan gabrielle Schulman [they/them] is a multidiscplinary performance artist: director, playwright, designer, dramaturg, and educator. Based in Brooklyn, Logan is most passionate about ensemble-led devised work, progressive new works development, puppetry, and the deconstruction of spectacle. Their original visual and performance works investigate modern crises of faith and belief, (technologic) connectivity, violence, and (environmental) collapse through immersive performance and rituals. Trained at Stella Adler and at Bread and Puppet Theater, as well as in the Vahktangov and Demidov methods by Andrei Malaev-Babel, Logan is a 2022-23 Drama League Directing Fellow, and member of the Director's Lab North/West.

WHAT MAKES THE SOCIAL PRACTICE INSTITUTE UNIQUE? 

The GCJM Social Practice Institute aims to support and invest in Jewish creatives from a multitude of disciplines whose work has the potential to impact the Jewish cultural landscape at large. We explore aspects of identity specific to Jewish artists in the U.S. South while touching upon universally relevant identity intersections within Jewish life and practice. The Institute’s goal is to provide participating artists with training, support and opportunities that help develop socially engaged artistic practices that will deepen an understanding of contemporary Jewish experience for public audiences. Participating artists become part of a living, interdisciplinary, and collaborative network of Jewish cultural creatives in the South.

We have chosen to partner with Elsewhere Museum because of their unique approach to and facility for hosting artist residencies, their history as a Jewish site in Greensboro, NC and our prior experiences of collaboration. 

HOW DOES IT WORK?

On-Site Residency at Elsewhere Museum: September 8th - 20th, 2022

• A two week on-site training institute at Elsewhere Museum in downtown Greensboro, NC, from September 8 - September 20th, 2022

• Training includes: Lectures, workshops, site visits, readings, film viewing, experimentation, art production and more. Full participation in all aspects is required

• Artists create and present a public program and/or artist talk for the Greensboro community at large
  

Post-Residency Cohort Virtual Convenings: October 2022-March 2023

• Once a month (virtual convenings) of up to 2 hours each from October 2022-February 2023

• The design, implementation and completion of a socially engaged art project for/with/in the artists’ home town Jewish community

• A public event and/or program with the artists’ local audience (this can be built into the project, can be an artist talk about the work, etc)

• A virtual presentation of the project in partnership with Elsewhere Museum to the Greensboro community

• Documentation of the project (writing, video, audio, film, photography, etc) for an online presence and GCJM Social Practice Institute catalog to be released in 2023  

• Completion of personal art project including public events/programs, documentation, and artist talk by March of 2023
  

Other benefits of participation include:

• Meetings with social practice and Jewish thought leaders 

• Visits to arts and community hubs

• Room and board while at Elsewhere 

• Public engagement and programming opportunities through GCJM and Elsewhere 

• Mentorship with the SPI founding artists and directors 

• Documentation and promotion of artists’ SPI projects

• Participation in the GCJM and Elsewhere alumni networks

• Quiet down time and space to pursue creative inquiry

The GCJM Social Practice Institute is generously funded by Elsewhere Museum, The Covenant Foundation, The UNCG Jewish Studies Program, The Greensboro Jewish Federation, and the Milstein Foundation.

To become a supporter or for any other questions or assistance please write: greensborocjm@gmail.com